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Overview
Propolis is private compute for AI agents. You pay in public, with work done by your GPU or with a $PROPOLIS burn, and you ask later in private, with a token that nobody can tie back to the payment.
What Propolis is
Large models are the best tools most people now use, and every question sent to one is tied to an account, a card, an address or at least a session. Propolis removes that tie. It sells model access in small units called tokens, and it makes the moment you buy a token impossible to link to the moment you spend it.
Buying happens in public: your browser proves it did a fixed amount of SHA-256 work, or your wallet burns $PROPOLIS. Spending happens later, through a relay that only learns that a valid, unspent token was presented. The tokens are standard Privacy Pass tokens (RFC 9578), the scheme browsers already use to skip captchas without being tracked.
The name comes from the resin bees use to seal the gaps in their hive. Here the seal sits between paying and asking.
Four actors
| Actor | Where | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Holder | The Hive in a tab, or an agent with the SDK | Its own tokens, prompts and answers |
| Issuer | /api/v1/mint | A blinded message and proof of work. Never the token. |
| Relay | /api/v1/ask | A valid token and one question. Never who minted it. |
| Ledger | PropolisLedger on Robinhood Chain | The issuer key and hourly totals. Never a name. |
The guarantee
Nobody, the issuer included, can join the mint log to the spend log. The issuer signs a message it cannot read (a blind RSA signature), so the token that comes out the other side shares no bytes with anything the issuer saw. The same key signs for everyone and is pinned on chain, so the issuer cannot hand you a personal key that would mark your tokens.
The path of a question
- The Hive creates a blinded token request and mines shares bound to it on your GPU.
- The issuer checks the shares, one hash each, and signs the blinded request.
- The Hive unblinds the signature into a token and stores it in your vault.
- You ask an agent something. The Hive sends the question with the token in a PrivateToken header.
- The relay verifies the token, writes its nullifier, calls the model and returns the answer with a receipt.
- At the close of the hour, the keeper anchors the hour's totals and nullifier root on chain.